Name: Vegetables Baked Beans with Pork and Tomato Sauce
Ingredients: beans; salt; concentrated tomato juice; pork

Why it works: Beans and tomato match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,713 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Vegetables Baked Beans with Pork and Tomato Sauce

Ingredients

beans
salt
concentrated tomato juice
pork

Directions

Soak the beans in salted water, changing the water several times to freshen them.
Substitute concentrated tomato juice for the tomato pulp and water in the sauce.
Combine the soaked beans with pork and the prepared tomato sauce.
Bake until heated through and flavors meld.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

Beans + tomatotop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,713 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Tomato + porktop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,843 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Beans + porktop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,000 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).